Page 19 of Tarek

That got the faintest twitch of a smile from him, and then the medical team arrived.

They took over, checking the injured crew. After stabilising the man's arm and confirming the break, they took him away for further treatment while the rest of the medical team treated the cuts and bruises. I stood and looked through the small inspection panel in the sealed hatch. Emergency plating was already moving into position over the damaged section of hull thanks to the deployed repair nanites.

The asteroid field was still ahead of us, and the ship was still taking minor impacts, but the immediate emergency was over. I watched the plating lock into place and listened to the alarms gradually fall silent. I was able to relax a fraction and take stock of what I'd just experienced, already running through it in my head for the report that was soon to follow. Nobody was dead. That was the sole good thing I could say about it, other than medical arriving promptly and the breach being sealed after the jam in the initial barrier mechanism was removed.

I'd seen damaged cargo holds before and even worse emergencies than this, but standing there, looking at another section of my life being patched together with emergency plating, something inside me simply went still.

I'm done.

The thought wasn't dramatic. I wasn't angry, and I wasn't frightened. I was simply finished. I didn't want another cargo hold or a ship or station's security monitor. I didn't want another alarm telling me that the thing I was standing on was about to hit something else or that the very air I needed to breathe was whooshing out into the vacuum and that if anything else went wrong, I'd be blown outside with it.

I wanted a planet, stars damn it. I wanted actual ground beneath my feet, something that didn't vibrate with engines and didn't occasionally try to kill me because the captain had decided that shaving six hours off a journey was worth taking a shortcut through an asteroid field. One with breathable air that wasn't locked inside a dome. I wanted somewhere I could wake up without automatically checking the nearest exit.

By the time we were clear of the asteroid field, the Wayfarer's Fortune had a fresh patch over Cargo Hold Three, a report waiting to be filed, and one very unhappy captain who had apparently decided that the minor damage was my fault for documenting it so thoroughly.

I didn't argue. I'd spent too many years learning that arguing with people who made bad decisions rarely made them better at making decisions. Instead, I went to the canteen. I needed something hot to drink, preferably something strong enough to make me forget the sound of that decompression alarm. The canteen was half full, with a few off duty crew eating, several were drinking, and no doubt that would be a problem for later me, and two humans at the far end of the room were talking about New Haven.

I'd heard the name before. Everyone had. New Haven was one of those colony projects that had been making the rounds lately, helped along by recruitment notices appearing on station boards and public networks as well as Earth, where humans applied for a settlement parcel and credits to build their claim in exchange for taking the Mylos mate matching test to see if they had a possible Dragonii mate. It was a relatively new Dragonii settlement, somewhere far enough out that the usual rules didn't seem to apply in quite the same way.

I wasn't particularly interested until I heard one of the humans say, “They're looking for security.”

That got my attention.

“Security?” the other asked.

“Sheriff, deputies, that sort of thing.”

I turned my mug slowly between my hands.

The other man laughed. “A sheriff? On a colony with what, five hundred people?”

“About that.”

“That's ridiculous.”

“Maybe. They're recruiting anyway. Even a colony that small gets troublemakers, and the governor is a Dragonii prince, you know."

I listened without making it obvious that I was listening.

They talked about tradespeople, medical personnel, farmers, mechanics, civic workers, and anyone else willing to leave the established worlds and help build something new. Training was available after arrival. Housing was part of the recruitment package. The colony was still small enough that people weren't just filling vacancies. They were helping decide what the place would become.

Then one of them said something that made me look up.

“They need people who actually want to live there.”

The other shrugged. “That's the problem with colonies.”

“No. That's the selling point to those dreaming of a good life dirt side."

I finished my drink and went back to my quarters. I'd heard enough. After the day I had, it was just the impetus I needed to pull up the New Haven recruitment page on my data pad.

The application for sheriff was straightforward.

Name.

Species.

Current occupation.